Heading South...

You are in: Timeline -> 2001 -> California Trip -> South
So Ann and Dave hit the road and headed South on the I-5... See the map of where we went.

The I-5 heads south... You can drive from Canada to Mexico, but we started at Seattle, and headed down towards Oregon.

This is the bridge across the River Columbia, which marks the border between Washington State and Oregon. Miles on the clock: about 150...

A bit further South (almost no distance at all) is Portland. Which oddly isn't the capital of Oregon (Salem is). Mind you - Seattle isn't the capital of Washington - its Olympia. Odd isn't it? Anyway - Portland is quite apparently a very cool city to hang out in, though the last time Dave was there he was at an office building...
 

Oregon is having a bit of a wildfire problem at the moment... Here's one in the distance.
 

...and the roads are long, and straight... Very long. And, in fact - very very straight...
Anyway - Ann and Dave eventually crossed the border into California (miles on the clock: about 450 by this point). We get stopped near the border at a checkpoint where they make sure that you aren't bringing any food into California. You can take anything you like out of the state - but bringing food in as a bad thing.

Ann and Dave drive a bit further until they reach a nice looking town, which has hotels. So -they stop at... wait for it.... Weed. Seriously - the place is called "Weed". There is a local college and apparently a fun thing to do is to have your photo taken under a sign that points to Weed in one direction and College in the other with a kind of "decisions, decisions" look on your face... So we're told by a faintly reliable source.

Having secured a hotel room Ann and Dave get dinner at the local diner, meet a couple of guys who've been fishing and landed a huge fish and eat steak. Its been a long drive - we've covered 500 miles and driven from Seattle right down through Oregon into California.

Our intrepid couple wake the next day next to Mt. Shasta - its huge and impressive, and for some reason Ann and Dave didn't take a photo of it, and opted instead for this photo of a volcano on the way out of weed...

Shame that, as Mt. Shasta is very pretty - very big, and there's skiing and stuff, which the local economy of Weed relies on it.

 

Here's a road sign... San Francisco is still 162 miles away, but having covered the seven hundred so far, 162 feels kind of close.

 

Ann and Dave reach Milpitas/San Jose later on Tuesday... This is a flower outside of the Border's Bookshop next door to the hotel.